Posted by teaparty on 3/9/2011 2:53:00 AM (view original):I just had a Texiera with fatigue at 15% collect 4 hits including a homer against me...reminds me of Gibson's homer off Eckersley...

Single-game feats by position players (or pitchers, for that matter) have nothing to do with this thread.

Pointing out that fatigue doesn't necessarily or always affect play seems to be on topic to me. Perhaps you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

No, this thread is specifically about *not that.* It is about an entire season's worth of performance. Single-game examples are not germane. Your comprehension level doesn't surprise me, given your nickname.

I don't suppose name calling is germane to this thread. Would you mind keeping your discourse civil?

1. I didn't call you a name. I speculatively insulted you. There's a nit-picking, annoying difference.
2. Name-calling is germane to *every* thread. Doodooface.
3. It still wasn't particularly uncivil. I can be particularly uncivil. This ain't what that looks like.
4. Sure. Keep us updated in a thread about position players with season-long fatigue below 30. I'm sure it'll be fascinating.
5. I don't know who nasty_llama really is. I suppose he or she could be a cousin of mine or something.

Yeah, I'm being kind of a jerk to you. Please forgive me. For some reason you irritate me and this is the internet.

Posted by just4me on 3/9/2011 3:21:00 AM (view original):While fatigue works on a linear model and it's easy to calculate the level of fatigue for your players given a certain # of PA or pitches, I'm fairly certain the actual effects of fatigue don't operate on a linear model. I've done a large bit of experimenting with fatigue for both hitters and pitchers (and detailed a large bit of it in the forums way back when) and find that the effects are relatively minimal going from 100 to 70 and from 30-0, but the difference between 70-30 is quite substantial. Not there isn't a performance drop between 100-70, there is, and a good drop at that, but a player at 70% will still put up fairly respectable numbers that, while lower than what they'd put up at 100%, are still very usable and depending on other factors can still even be competitive. The difference between a player at 70% and 30% is huge (I'll expand this more later), but again, the difference between 30 & 0% is again fairly close. There's a difference and the player at 30% will put up noticeably better stats than the player at 0%, but in the end, they're both just horrible and neither is going to help you win many (any) games.

The way I like to think of it - though these are just purely rounded example numbers - is that between 100 & 70% you have about a 15% drop in performance, from 70 to 30% you have about a 70% drop in performance, and then from 30 to 0% there is also a 15% drop in performance. This is most easily seen in pitchers as it is easier to control their fatigue levels than it is that of hitters (as it's easier to control how many pitches your pitcher throws than how many PA your hitters get in a game). Some of my early fatigue strategy tests and teams were built on the premise that these players would still perform at a competitive level at as low as 80%. And some of my games played tests for pitchers operated on the idea that a pitcher could go as low as 70% and still be relatively effective (And by that, I mean a ~1.00 WHIP turning into a ~1.20 WHIP).

As a purely anecdotal example, I drafted the 1918 Babe Ruth onto a $40m team (solely to prove a point to schwarze about the available player pool in low cap leagues in the hope of him expanding the WISC to include some lower cap leagues and to occasionally change the cap in the Exclusive Ownership league (when he ran it) to a lower cap) and was a borderline playoff team down the stretch run. Ruth was getting fatigued, but was easily my best hitter, so I slowly bumped his autorest down from 93 to 90 and then to 85. By the time we secured a playoff spot Ruth was down to the low 80s. He played throughout the whole playoffs while in the blue and down the stretch (about 20 games plus the playoffs) in which he spent the vast majority of the time blue he put up #s substantially better than he had all season. Now, I wouldn't expect that, and it was certainly an abnormality, but it still goes to show that a fatigued player can put up great numbers.

Posted by teaparty on 3/9/2011 2:53:00 AM (view original):I just had a Texiera with fatigue at 15% collect 4 hits including a homer against me...reminds me of Gibson's homer off Eckersley...

Single-game feats by position players (or pitchers, for that matter) have nothing to do with this thread.

Pointing out that fatigue doesn't necessarily or always affect play seems to be on topic to me. Perhaps you just woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning.

No, this thread is specifically about *not that.* It is about an entire season's worth of performance. Single-game examples are not germane. Your comprehension level doesn't surprise me, given your nickname.

Posted by Trentonjoe on 3/9/2011 10:58:00 AM (view original):I wonder if there are components of pitching that is more impacted by fatigue than others.

For fielders, drawing walks seem to be not affected so much but fielding takes a larger hit.

I wonder if tired pitchers become "worse" at striking people out. This would probably not affect someone like Cy Young significantly.

Yes, I think that is a huge part of it as well. Tired pitchers are worse at striking hitters out and they also issue more walks. Young isn't affected much by the strikeout factor as he already doesn't strike many hitters out and his BB totals in this instance were about 35% worse than his average season from his performance history while his BB/9 rate was about 20% worse. The defense behind this Young was also better than average as a whole, coupled with the slightly favorable pitchers park, this helped prevent the added walks from doing much damage to his overall stats.

THAT is germane. It would seem to indicate that fatigue is almost irrelevant to low-K, low-BB pitchers with a solid defense and decent park. If it holds true, it seems you could gain a tremendous advantage by exploiting it.

Glad this post is up. Do players continue to tire in the playoffs at the same rate? I see owners using their top guys even at the end of the season even when they have the division wrapped up? Why not rest them untill the playoffs?